Martin Luther once famously said “Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.”  The writer of the classic hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”, Luther understood much of the power and beauty of music.

Throughout the history of God’s people, music has been a profound means and vehicle for worship of God.  From the Psalms of David and the Sons of Korah, to the hymns of the early Church to hymns like “Be Thou My Vision”, “Amazing Grace” and “In Christ Alone”, music has played a powerful role in how God’s People worship Him.

In recent years, the evangelical Contemporary Christian Music industry has “rediscovered” the role that hymns can play in worship.  Following along in the wake of the praise and worship sub-genre, hymns have found a strong niche and small appreciation amongst CCM consumers.  Formerly relegated to dusty old hymnals, “dead and dying” churches and youthful ridicule, hymns have found something of a renaissance in the evangelical world through the work of the Michael W. Smiths and Chris Tomlins of the world.  Fortunately for CCM, such remakes and covers struck a chord and a money-making sub-genre of a sub-genre of a pseudo-genre was birthed and bloated to the point of mockery, shameless profiteering and ugly self-promotion.

Thankfully, not everybody involved in the writing and remaking of hymns have been sucked into the dark CCM vortex.  Through the efforts of artists and groups such as Stewart Townend, The Gettys, Sovereign Grace Music, Indelible Grace and Sandra McCracken, true, respectful, worshipful and artistic hymn-writing has made a genuinely strong comeback.

Of particular note is Sandra McCracken’s beautiful “In Feast or Fallow”.  A collection of new hymns, old hymns, old hymns remade and even a classic in its original form and with its original title, “In Feast or Fallow” is a solid exploration of plenty and need, and a worthwhile expression of praise to God; in times of feast and even in times when life’s ground must for a time remain fallow.  Describing the context of the hymns, McCracken says “There are life seasons of palpable spiritual springtime, when the flowers burst with color and new leaves shoot out of every stem. There are seasons of desert isolation and winter darkness. There are whole years when you have so much stored grain and wine that you forget who you are and where you came from. And there are other times when you have barely enough, and your soul is still and satisfied.”  This theme is carried throughout the album with songs born of grief (“Petition”, written by Anne Steele, as a response to her fiancé’s untimely death a day before they were to be wed), a song praying for God’s blessing (“Give Reviving”), a song celebrating life (“Hidden Place”, derived from a journal entry McCracken wrote 10 days before the birth of her daughter), a song celebrating Advent (Martin Luther’s “This is the Christ”), a song born of study of the book of Judges (“Sweet Sorrow”), a song about justice (“Justice Will Roll Down”, pulled from Amos 5:24) and a classic about the amazing Grace of God (“Faith’s Review and Expectation” by John Newton).  Throughout the album McCracken calls herself and the listener to look to Christ for Hope to the Father for unyielding love and to the Spirit for the strength to carry on, even in the midst of profound suffering and sorrow.

McCracken teamed up with her producer husband, Derek Webb, for recording the album and the result in a perfect blend of worshipful music and lyrics.  Blending the old and the new, the sound moves from traditional to a nuanced (and greatly subdued) expression of the electronica sound that Derek utilized more obviously in “Stockholm Syndrome“.  What is clear is that McCracken and Webb are a dynamic and effectively creative team.  Marriage serves to strengthen two people as individuals, even as both become one.  This truism is quite evident in McCracken and Webb, as both have become better artists through each other.

Finally, it is heartening to see the respect and sobriety with which McCracken approaches her material and the material of Saints long dead, as she adds her own magnificent contributions to the voluminous tome of work that came before.  Respecting the Tradition, yet confidently adding to it, McCracken shows great sensitivity and artistry.  The closing song in the album, “Faith’s Review and Expectation” is a brilliant cover of Newton’s famously classic “Amazing Grace”, sung with tact, class and true to its original form and intent.

Perhaps there is not better compliment to McCracken than to say that Luther and Newton (and the host of hymn-writing saints who came before and after) would undoubtedly be proud and would give a hearty amen to the chorus of the song “In Feast or Fallow”:

In the harvest feast or the fallow ground
My certain hope is in Jesus found
My lord, my cup, my portion sure
Whatever comes we shall endure
Whatever comes we shall endure

“The crowd left believing they had been moved by God and touched by Jesus. They hadn’t. They had been seduced by slick video packages and had their emotional desire for love, community and certainty met by manipulation. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit; it was just people.”

- Catherine Deveny (http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/shaken-but-not-stirred-by-stadiumrock-spirituality-20090728-e02k.html?page=-1)

Sermon Title – “The Church in Pergamus: Discernment and Discipline”
Text – Revelation 2:12-17
Preacher – Jarrett Downs

In Christ I move from death to life
I’m saved to follow Him
I have the freedom to obey
To flee away from sin
I worship Christ, the Son of God
The only God there is
And as I’m free I can enjoy
The life the Father gives

Yet still I live where Satan roams
With idols all about
My flesh I fight and still I sin
Still fighting in the bout
The people round about me all
Will worship idols false
They wish me to engage their sin
And dine in devils’ halls

Sometimes I want to join the play
Temptations growing strong
Yet then again I hate our sin
I know its wicked wrong
Some whisper I have freedom to
Enjoin the sins enjoyed
Yet in my heart and by His Grace
I’ll worship Christ my Lord

Lord, give me discipline to fight
The sins that will destroy
Discernment to perceive the wrong
Deceptions men employ
Lord, help me use my liberty
I have by Jesus’ Grace
To glorify Your Holy Name
And sing Your Righteous Praise

My previous posts in this series are below: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 I finished Part 3 in this series with a basic question: how is this missions model incarnational? To explain, the normal and traditional way of doing missions (at least according to this model) is shown below: Usually, the missionary is trained and mentored in the sending context and sent out into the rest of the world to evangelize, and for the church-planter, to plant churches. But, what if the model took on this shape: Notice in what context the whole model exists. Within this model the missionaries leave their home churches, go to their mission field and serve, are trained, are sent and plant planting churches within the indigenous context.

As many have noted, the number of “unreached” people groups have been dropping precipitously. This is a wonderful development and we should thank God for it. But, we dare not forget the scores of lost men who remain in groups that have been “reached”. We are called by God to make disciples among all the nations and all of the people groups, not just among those who are unreached. A direct (and obvious) corollary of the reality of there being fewer unreached people groups is the reality of there being more reached people groups. Because of this reality, there are more indigenous churches to serve in, to be trained in, and to be sent by to plant more indigenous, Bible believing, Gospel-Saturated planting churches.

Consider what a profound example of incarnational humility this can be. If you are a man called of God to someday pastor, it will be a great statement of trust in Christ and submission to others to, in faith, immerse yourself in another culture and serve in a local church in that culture. You then are trained by “indigenous” pastors and are sent by indigenous churches to plant indigenous churches that themselves plant indigenous churches that plant indigenous (or glory be to God, foreign) churches. You’ll more fully learn how to live with people of another culture. You’ll more fully learn how they think, how they live, how they worship and how they serve. You’ll be trained by men who know their culture, to serve others in that culture. You allow and encourage the indigenous church to take ownership and responsibility to plant indigenous churches that otherwise would have been planted by your home-culture church. Is this not a wonderful example of Christian unity? Is this not a wonderful example of the Biblical diversity that is found in the love of Christ? Is this not a profound declaration of the priority of our Heavenly Citizenship over the citizenship of our native land?

What are the full implication and ramifications of this model? Honestly, I have no way of knowing. I would pray that it would foster a passion for the glory of Christ in our unity as children of the Father. I pray it would encourage humility and discourage the arrogance that is found all too often in the saints. I pray that it would encourage us to preach Christ to all peoples. We must remember that every generation presents us with a new crop of souls to be harvested. May we ever submit to the Will of God and seek his glory, by the Son’s Grace and through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.

In review, here is the suggested model for living and serving incarnationally in missionary church planting.

In Scripture (1 Peter 3:8-9, Ephesians 4:1-6) Christians are called to submit to and live in deference one to another. In Hebrews 13:17 Christians are called to submit to their leadership (within Christian mutual submission). Being a churchman can and should be a very humbling experience. As much as the human being desires absolute autonomy, the simple truth is that in Christ we are unified to each other. In Christ we are to submit to one another with humble selflessness, giving deference to each other. If a man cannot do this in a local church, how can he have any reasonable expectation of asking men and women to follow his leadership as an undershepherd? How can a pastor hope to lead like Christ unless he can first be led? There is so much emphasis in evangelicalism on being a good leader that many people forget that in order to be a Christ-like servant-leader you must be a Christ-like servant-follower. Pastors are servants, under-shepherds, slaves and messenger boys, called of God to minister to Christ’s Body.

It is within this context that certain men are called out of the body of believers into roles of leadership. Yet, this does not necessarily happen instantaneously. In the examples of Barnabus and his protégé Paul, and then in Paul and his protégés Timothy and Titus, there is a very strong element of pastoral mentoring that occurs.  In this modern era of Christianity, most of the heart of pastoral training is expected to be completed at a seminary. There is on the job training that happens, as with any job, but usually, to be a pastor means that one must go to seminary, get a degree of some kind, and then wait for one’s resume to be picked up by a church somewhere who will then call the candidate in question and examine him. Where is the ownership in the local church for a man’s training and development in such a system?  Seminaries are not bad institutions. There is a lot of good that come out of seminaries, as well as bad. The problem comes when the local church abdicates her responsibility and ability to train her own pastors, missionaries and missionary church planters by farming out the work to the plethora of available para-church organizations and denominational institutions.

Once the pastors or missionaries or missionary church planters are trained and ready, who sends them? Should the local church rely solely on Missions agencies and church planting networks to send their men and women to the field? I think the example of the Holy Spirit through the Church in Antioch is a hearty no! It was the local church in Antioch that sent Barnabas and Paul. The local church must send out her own! This duty, calling and privilege is not the purview of the missions agency or the denomination. Are missions agencies or denominational missions wings bad? Again, not necessarily. Problems arise when local churches renege on their responsibilities. The church must train her people and she must take ownership of her calling before God to send them out among the nations.

Finally, as men and women are sent around the world to spread the good news of the Gospel, it must be done within the realm of planting churches that plant churches. Thus we see the organic nature of the Church: by God’s Grace, in Christ and through the Spirit’s power, churches reproduce. Interestingly enough, the three previous elements of this model happen at this point. One the one hand serving, teaching/learning and sending comes into play with this fourth element; but at the same time, the planted church is learning how to serve, teach/learn and send. In order for a church to be able to plant churches there should be a corporately similar trajectory of growth for the church as their should have been for the missionary church planter.

There are two additional aspects of this model that should be explained.

First, each subsequent element of the model is within the context of the previous element. Every Christian should be a part of a local church, that’s the large context of the model. Yet not everyone will be mentored to be a pastor/church planter. Even fewer will actually become pastors and even fewer will actually become church planters. Of the church planters and the churches that will be planted, even fewer churches will be planted that actually go out themselves to plant churches.

Secondly, every subsequent element of the model envelopes a larger and larger focus. For the first element, the focus is within the local church. As mentorship progresses to being sent the focus grows, finally culminating with an ever-expanding reality of planted churches planting churches for the purpose of worshiping God and evangelizing and discipling of all the peoples in all the lands throughout all the world.

A potentially obvious question is perhaps apparent. How is this incarnational?  I’ll answer that with the last and final post.

There are scores of ideas in our contemporary milieu of evangelical thought on how to best accomplish our Christ-given Great Commission Responsibility. There are many various and sundry models, concepts and strategies that are used to bring the message of Jesus to a lost and dying world in ways that are missional, confrontational, contextual, relevant and incarnational.

All of these ideas and means can be well and good, so long as they are within the realm of biblical thought, principles and orthodoxy. Is that not the rub? Are we biblical in our methodologies or do we evangelize according to our own abilities and devices? Our evangelical strategies and missiological frameworks must be examined in light of and submitted to the Truth of God’s Written Will and Word. As such, please permit me to submit to you a biblical model of incarnational missionary church planting, based on the example of the early Church as led by the Holy Spirit.

As much as we read and hear about the epistle writer Paul, it is very enlightening to understand how Paul became the Missionary Church Planter we read about in the book of Acts and in his letters. After his Damascus Road Experience, Paul does not automatically seek to become a missionary church planter.  After a time of learning from the Lord in Arabia, he sought to be with the disciples, in Damascus and Jerusalem. He recognized the need for the community and accountability that a group of like-minded believers can provide for each other. Then, when the need arose, Barnabas went to Tarsus (where Paul had been sent by the disciples in Jerusalem, because he had severely angered the Hellenists with his bold and biblical preaching), found Paul, brought him back to Antioch and together they ministered to the saints. The Scripture then says that in those days a prophecy was made concerning a famine in Jerusalem, so that the church in Antioch, taking responsibility to help their brothers in Jerusalem, sends Barnabas and Paul to Jerusalem with relief. We’re then told in Acts 13:1-3 that while the disciples in Antioch were worshipping and fasting that the Holy Spirit sets Barnabas and Paul apart for the work that was prepared for them to do. And, in obedience, the local church in Antioch sends Barnabas and Paul on God’s mission.

It is in the middle of Acts 13 that we see a major shift in Paul’s Ministry. He takes the lead. The student had concluded that stage of his education and training and took the leadership responsibility of the missionary team. From that point on in Acts, we see Paul planting churches in Ephesus, Corinth, Galatia, Thessalonica, and Philippi. It is important to note that Paul planted churches in major cities. It is from these urban centers that the indigenous churches were planted and from the urban areas that these planting churches planted.

In addition to Paul, we see this same example of serving/submitting, teaching/learning, sending and planting in Timothy and Titus. Both were men discipled under the ministry of Paul, both were trained in some measure by Paul and both then had the responsibility of discipling, mentoring and leading other men and churches.

Based off of the examples of Barnabas, Paul, Timothy and Titus, I would submit to you the following model for Biblical Missionary Church Planting:

In the next post in this series, I’ll explain what each element of the model means and why it matters.

(set to the tune of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded”)

Oh Lord my sin o’ertakes me
And claims me as its own
It blinds my eyes with malice
So I can’t see Your Throne
It wraps its foulest tendrils
Around my bony frame
It warps my inhibitions
So I’ll forget Your Name

I hate it when I’m sinful
I long to do Your Will
Lord, give me Grace to conquer
The sin within me still
I long, Lord, to be holy
Lord shower me with grace
Lord sanctify Your servant
To stand before Your Face

Lord bring me soon to Glory
Where I’ll be free from sin
I long to dwell in Heaven
Lord bring me to the end
I long to see Your Glory
With pure and seeing eyes
I long to worship fully
Where worship never dies

There has been a good amount of discussion in recent weeks and months within Baptist circles on how exactly we are to “do church” and “do worship” and “do missions”.  As such, there is a great deal of healthy suspicion of ideas that are new and different.  Much of the concern is justified.  If we are worshiping or witnessing or evangelizing in a way that supersedes the truths of Scripture, or if we are not trusting God to communicate, through His Word, but are rather trusting ourselves and our own clever creativity, then we have some real soul-searching to do.

My question then is this: Is it not possible that our traditional ways of doing evangelism and worship and Christian living should also be subjected to the same scrutiny?  If we sang fewer songs or prayed at different parts of the service or ceased having a Baptist Altar Call, would our members think that we had left a Biblically prescribed mode of worship?  If we stopped handing out tracts or going door-to-door, would our people believe that we had stopped evangelizing biblically?  Has our understanding of the Bible become so wed to our traditions that anything besides those traditions smacks to us of heresy (or at least the seeds of it)?

Put another way, is it not possible that our insistence on doing church and evangelism “biblically” is really an attempt to communicate the Bible to our church members (in good standing) in ways that they will understand?  And is this communication of a nature such that we are practicing the same distrust and disdain for the power and efficacy of the Scriptures (and dare I say, of the Gospel itself) that we suspect and charge the “new” and the “different” with?

Are we really looking to live biblically as Christians, or is our understanding of Christ, the Church and how we relate to both fundamentally dependent on our own understanding?  Are we submitting to Christ and to His Word, or are we judging others by our faulty standards, traditions, restraints, constraints and assumptions?

Come sing all ye Christians of Yahweh the Lord
Come sing all Christians for Jesus
Come raise up your voices in worship of God
Come raise up your voices in praises
Come worship with voices,
Come raise them up high
Come sing of your Savior,
And to His Name cry
Come sing with much fervor, with all of your might
Come sing all ye Christians for Jesus

Come live all ye Christians for your loving God
Come live all ye Christians for Jesus
Come live out your actions in worship so sweet
Come live out your actions in praises
Your lives are all pieces
Of melodies sweet
They’re notes raised to Heaven
To our Mercy Seat
So live with much fervor, to God Glorify
Come live all ye Christians for Jesus

Come witness ye Christians for Yahweh the Lord
Come witness ye Christians for Jesus
You’re called with a purpose, to spread Jesus’ Word
Come witness ye Christians with praises
Your lives are a poem
Of our Savior’s Grace
Come show all the deaf men
How you sing your race
So witness with fervor, make music so sweet
Come witness ye Christians for Jesus

Come pray all ye Christians to Your loving God
Come pray all ye Christians to Jesus
You all have a Savior, your Advocate Strong
So pray all ye Christians with praises
Though no one may hear them
Your prayers make a song
They sing of God’s glory
His love sings along
So pray with much fervor, come pray to our King
Come pray all ye Christians for Jesus

Come give all ye Christians for Yahweh the Lord
Come give all ye Christians for Jesus
You’ve been blessed with riches, so give to the poor
Come give all ye Christians with praises
There’s poor all around you
The strong and the weak
Come show them God’s music
Come sing all ye meek
Come give with much fervor, come give for your Lord
Come give all ye Christians for Jesus

Come read all ye Christians of your Loving God
Come read all ye Christians of Jesus
The Scripture’s before you, God’s Truth’s been revealed
Come read all ye Christians with praises
Come read through God’s Epic
Of His Glory shown
Come sing with the Psalmist
Come sing of God’s Son
Come read with much fervor, come sing God’s Great Song
Come read all ye Christians of Jesus

Come sing all ye Christians, come live and come pray
Come witness ye Christians of Jesus
Come read all ye Christians through God’s Holy Word
Come sing all ye Christians with praises
Come relish ye Christians
The Grace of our King
Come drown in His Mercy
Come all ye and Sing
His Throne is before you, the battle is won
Come sing all ye Christians for Jesus

Come now ye Church and sing
To Your kind God above
He is your Lord, He is your King
Who showers you with Love
Come now and worship Christ
Come bask in Jesus’ light
Come look and wonder at the sight
With new and seeing eyes

Come now ye Church and love
Come love the weak and poor
You’re granted grace from God above
You’re weak before the Lord
You’re blessed with much to give
So show the Love of Christ
You have the Word by which to live
Come live with Jesus’ might

Come now ye Church of Christ
You sinners made anew
You’re called to live most holy lives
This calling won’t be through
Till Jesus comes again
With trumpets and with might
Come live for Christ, you Born-Again
Come live before His Light